Journal of No. 118

It was a really great show. I only wish it hadn't been a long show after a long Friday after a long week, but I still had such a great time.

My flickr set

Can't argue with the Wiltern as a venue. The place is gorgeous. It looked a little different this time, with a half dozen minibars throughout the various lobbies selling Caucasians. Lots of people milling about. Fewer costumes than at the bowling night we went to last time, but still quite a few. We got ourselves a couple oat sodas and found a nice spot in the mezzanine. A bit before showtime, Peter Exline came out and told his story.

The Kyle Gass Band opened up the official festivities, dropping in to see what condition their condition was in. They had to work at it, and they definitely stepped over the line by trying out an Eagles tune, but they soon had the crowd whipped up and plenty of people on their feet at the foot of the stage. Some impressive rock flute.

While they changed gear, a few more of the actors said hello. Coffeeshop lady had just turned 80, and the fest crowd filled that room with "Happy Birthday". Ralphs checker girl. My pic of irate Corvette owner was blurrier than most, but he was there. Liam. And Jeff Dowd, who was the Seattle Seven (with six other guys). He rambled a bit, and perhaps had been less (more?) strict than usual with his drug regimen.

And then it was Jeff Bridges and the Abiders. I found it hard to believe this was actually happening. Hey, there's Oscar-winner Jeff Bridges playing a song from Crazy Heart. Hey, there's the Dude playing the opening and closing songs of the Big Lebowski. Hey, there's the Oscar-duding Crazy Bridges playing Creedence.

Bridges came back to introduce the film, and Duded himself up with sweater and glasses. The crowd went apeshit. This is a terrible picture of a perfect little moment:



My favorite part of watching the movie was seeing that everyone else (at least in LA) recognizes that LA is also a star of this film. When you first see the lights of the city, that got as much applause as most of the other characters when they appeared. Philip Seymour Hoffman was sent off with the longest applause.

It was a given that people were going to shout out lines, but it was all good fun (except that one drunk guy). Another given is that whenever the Dude lit a J, the audience was going to do likewise. You wouldn't think you could make that huge space reek, but you can. If I have a least favorite part, it's that too many guys seem to think that Walter is the hero of this film. He's not wrong; he's just an asshole.

Let's see how brief I can make this...
( not very, as it turns out )

Random Lebowski obscure tangent.... Produced some babble for work that mentioned paraquat.

I thought work was going to ease off, but I was wrong. However, mucho profit in the week. Despite some snafus with mailing things to Russia.

Have continued with the Smithsonian Puzzle. Puzzle 7 was a walk down memory lane... Remember when the GRE still had those logic puzzle things... You know the sort of thing: Mrs. A, Mrs. B, and Mrs. C are an axe murderer, a bibliomancer, and a courtesan. The courtesan lives in a white house across the street from the cemetery. And so on. Anyway, it was fun. I love those things.

Puzzle 8 kicked my ass. Over and over. I was a little annoyed, since an earlier rule taught me that endless searching on the Smithsonian website was not the right way to solve it. Whereas this one did indeed require endless, but purposeful, searching on the Smithsonian website. I was three steps beyond giving up, when I lassoed Dr. Pookie into helping. And that maybe got me involved and reenthused again, and the answer almost miraculously appeared. I was more or less doing it right from the beginning, it just takes a lot of dedication. Ok, I'll admit when I was less dedicated, I wandered off into cloud cuckoo land and started decoding things into bit-7 ASCII.

Puzzle 9 was a splendid rebus. Although I was briefly flummoxed, due to not counting my low brass accurately. I thought I was going crazy, because I had a message in plain English that was obviously correct, but it wasn't working.

Next up. Puzzle 10. Rumored to be a doozy. And then the final acrostic.

The People of the Mist is one of HR Haggard's many African adventure stories. You've probably heard of King Solomon's Mines or She, but the reason you (or, I, rather) never heard of the People of the Mist, is that it's not that good. There are some good two-fisted scenes of action, but the overall plot is marred by more coincidences than a Shakespeare play, and of course the casual racism. One is seldom in doubt that two destitute Europeans can tackle an entire minor civilization -- with the help of one or two of the better sort of native -- while simultaneously carrying on a junior high romance. Or that our hero must ultimately be restored to his ancestral estates, which had been bought by, of all things, a Jew! And love wins in the end, which is a good thing, since, "had their feelings been much less tender towards each other than was the case, it would still have been desirable, in view of the extraordinary intimacy into which they had been thrown during the past months, that they should become man and wife."

Adam Bertocci's Two Gentlemen of Lebowski is a much more thoroughly enjoyable work. What if Shakespeare had written The Big Lebowski? I confess I'm a much bigger fan of the Dude than I am of the Bard, but I truly appreciate the cleverness with which Bertocci approached this project. And the aptness of the concept; what is The Stranger, if not a chorus? The importance of language in The Big Lebowski is supported in its translation into the Elizabethan Age, where the cable being broken is a disaster nautical, rather than telecommunicational. And I very much appreciated his use of marginal glosses for vocabulary, some serious, some quasi-serious, some ridiculous.

lance: euphemism for penis. See also most nouns in Shakespeare.

A most excellent diversion, in the parlance of our times.